The app is the first by Pretty Smart Women, a company by Phoenix couple Susan Green and Robin J. Phillips. The two got the idea for the app after going on vacation with friends last summer. Everyone kept taking selfies, but no one liked how they looked.

"It's not that they hated their body, they just didn't like how they looked in the picture," Green told The Times.

Upon returning, Green and Phillips decided to make an app that would shave a few pounds off users' selfies.

"For as long as anybody can remember, there has always been that thing: the camera adds 10 or 15 pounds to you," said Green, a broadcast journalist. "That's why we're not going over 15 pounds."

But even though the app makes it possible to instantly lose 15 pounds, Green said she uses the selfies she takes with her app to motivate herself to lose weight in real life.

"It's not that I don't like how I look, I just need to be healthy," she said. "And this is how I want to try to do it."

Green said she sees SkinneePix as a playful app that can be used among friends for entertainment.

""It's a fun app, you play with your friends, and it's just like, holy geez, look at that!" she said. "The selfie craze has just sort of taken off, and this is one of those fun things you can do with it."

For now, the app is only available for iPhone users, but an Android version is in the works.